A bill signed by Gov. Brian Sandoval this year attempted to ban the renting of pets, tires, batteries and hearing aids but it may not stop businesses from continuing to rent out these things, according to mixed legal opinions.

At the end of the Nevada Legislature, Senate bill 185 was amended with language specifically targeting the products that Bristlecone Holdings, Nextep Funding and their competitors lease to customers.

The law will go into effect July 1.

The law basically says that at the end of a leasing period, certain products, such as animals, have no or minimal remaining value, therefore, they cannot be leased in the first place.

“That’s the reason we excluded specifically furniture, for instance, because if you rent a couch, by the time you’re done, it’s still got value. But if you rent car brakes, there’s no value there," said Assemblywoman Lesley Cohen, D-Las Vegas, who sponsored the bill.

Cohen said she was not specifically going after Bristlecone or Nextep but knows they both lease these products to customers.

Continuing to lease these products constitutes consumer fraud and deceptive business practices, according to the bill.

The intent of the law is “to make sure we don’t have the practice in Nevada, whether it’s an existing company or keeping (another company) from moving in because they think the market is ripe and they want to go after our consumers,” Cohen said.

But there's just one problem, according to attorney Henry Wolfe of New Jersey-based The Wolf Law Firm. The law didn't specify what "minimal value" means.

"All a dog 'lessor' would have to do to comply with the law is to include an estimate of what the dog will be worth at the end of the lease that is more than a (minimal value)," Wolfe wrote. "$25? $50?"

And that's what Bristlecone and others have always done.

Their contracts establish a value for all property at the end of each lease. So every piece of property they lease has some remaining value determined by that final buyout price, whether it's $100 or $2,000.

In a furniture contract made available to the RGJ through court documents, a $1,000 living room set still had a $200 value at the end of 17 months.

For that reason, they comply with the letter of the law, but Dan Wulz, an attorney at the Legal Aide Center of Southern Nevada, said that's not all that matters.

“There’s a good history in the law looking past the numbers to see what the true nature of the contract is," Wulz said. "In other words, someone can write a lease and it’s really a disguised credit sale. The lease can comply with the Federal Consumer Leasing Act to a T, but the court will look past the form to the substance."

Wulz was not involved in the creation or lobbying of the bill.

He said companies are welcome to continue leasing but someone, including the Nevada Attorney General, can challenge them.

"A judge or jury would have to decide if what they were doing should be prohibited," Wulz said.

Basically, he said someone would need to sue over a contract and convince the judge or jury that the final value of a dog is negligible since the law doesn't specify an exact number.

“I would argue that the things the bill lists ... are inherently not expected to have more than a (minimal) value at the end of the lease," Wulz said. "A lessor should not try to evade that law by inserting an inflated or false estimate of its value at the end.”

“Part of the problems we find overall in consumer law is that there’s always people looking to get through loopholes," Cohen said of the contracts. "But I think we covered that. But if there’s a loophole then we’ll get it next session."